Forever Yours
by ShadowsOnTheMoon
Summary: She would not love him until death parted them – she would love him beyond that, beyond hope and reason and logic. She would love him until the world stopped spinning and the stars winked out of existence and the oceans faded away to nothingness.


**Hello, and thanks for stopping by my story. For those of you familiar with my work, feel free to skip straight to the good stuff. Everyone else, a word of warning: I am arguably the darkest Hufflepuff to ever live, so if you're looking for a happy story, do NOT read this. Seriously, run away and never return. I am known for character deaths, ice cream buckets full of angst, and taking delight in using my way with words to make people cry. Depressing is my thing, so if you're ready for a little heartbreak and maybe a few tears, by all means read on. This story is dark and depressing, and the few lighter elements serve only to make the rest of it more tragic. I make no promises of a happy ending (or beginning, or middle) and take no responsibility for anything this story may do to your heart.**

**Aside from that, there are a couple things you need to know. First, this is a completed one-shot, and, for obvious reasons, will not be continued. The pieces in italics at the start/end are from the song Pray by Kodaline, because it was just the right kind of depressing for this story. The fic is set slightly in the future, vaguely AU, it doesn't really matter how much. Finally, I really really like reviews, so if you read the story and have a spare minute, I would love to hear what you think, even if it's just incoherent sobbing or (well-intentioned) death threats.**

**That's all. Enjoy, review, and maybe I'll see you in some of my other stories.**

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_How many nights do you lie dreaming?  
I'm counting the days since you went away.  
When I lost my heart, life lost all meaning.  
What I would give to see you again…_

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_Until death do us part._

That was how long she'd promised to love him. Amidst a sea of lilies and roses, their intoxicating scent making her giddy, she had pledged to be his forever. In the quiet of the church, nothing but the rustling of her gown to disturb the silence, she had promised to be faithful and true. Looking into his eyes, falling into his heart, she had made her vows in a voice that trembled not with fear but with joy. For the first time in her life she was absolutely certain – of herself, of her feelings, of her future.

_"I, Spencer Hastings, promise to love you, Toby Cavanaugh… until death do us part."_

What she hadn't realized was that she was lying. It had never been as simple as all that, as clear cut and easily defined. She would not love him until death parted them – she would love him beyond that, beyond hope and reason and logic. She would love him until the world stopped spinning and the stars winked out of existence and the oceans faded away to nothingness.

She would love him until death parted them, and until it brought them back together again.

And even then it wouldn't stop. She understood now what she hadn't before: the depths of love, the transcending beauty of giving yourself so completely to someone. It wasn't about losing control, or giving them power over you; it was about recognizing that they already had power over you, and that you were willing to offer your heart to them because they deserved nothing less.

What nobody told her, what nobody could have told her, was that the feelings would not stop when the bullet ripped into his body. They would not lessen when she got the call that he was in the hospital, when she slid to the floor of her office because her legs could not hold her anymore. They would not fade when she finally made it to the hospital, only for a doctor to shake his head sadly and offer his condolences.

They didn't stop.

Until that moment, Spencer had never known true desolation, had never known what real mourning sounded like. And then she was falling into her friend's arms, sobs tearing through her body and making it hard to breathe, a thin wail rising from her lips as the knowledge sank in. In that moment she knew what ten years of grief felt like. She understood what it was like to have your soul torn from your body and tossed into the air, to have your heart trampled by a doctor's feet as he walked over to explain why he could not, would not, save your husband's life.

_"There was a lot of internal bleeding. We did the best we could, but the damage was too extensive. In technical terms…"_

She didn't care about technical terms. She didn't care about how sorry the doctor was, paid no attention to the sympathy in his eyes, hardly even noticed when he left. She was crumbling in on herself, and if not for her friends' arms around her she would have fallen to the floor, dead weight, useless without her heart.

Her friends helped her through. They took turns watching over her, sleeping over at her house, brewing her tea and fluffing her pillows and making pithy comments on the weather just to break the morose silence that descended upon her house. _Their_ house. For a week afterward, she would not sleep in their bed. She would not touch the sheets, the pillow, the last place he had ever held her.

She dragged a blanket and a pillow down to the sofa and slept there, falling asleep to a melody of the sound of her own tears, waking up to the sounds of her screams as she dragged herself from yet another nightmare, another dream in which she could not save him. She was always just a second too late, a fraction too slow, never quite good enough to save a man who deserved more than the hand fate had dealt him. More than she had given him.

The first night she slept in their bed again she stayed on her side, only letting her fingertips brush the edge of the side where he used to lie, where they used to discuss love and life and death, in the comfort of darkness that seemed to hold them with a mother's love. Now the darkness seemed oppressive, the silence suffocating.

A month after his funeral, she began to forget. She would wake in a panic, struggling to recall his last words to her or the clothes he was wearing the first time she saw him or the exact pitch of his laughter. One night she even forgot the color of his eyes, and went into a frenzy trying to figure it out, as if that would somehow bring him closer. When Hanna came home that night she found her sobbing over a photo album, her fingers resting on his face as she gazed into his eyes.

_"Blue," she'd sobbed as Hanna wrapped her arms around her, "his eyes were blue."_

Her friends knew better than to ask, but they didn't know how to help. They saw her falling apart, completely unravelling, but they didn't seem to know if she wanted distance or if giving her space would be enough to push her over the edge. What they didn't realize was that when Toby died, everything had rearranged. Such a cataclysmic event had caused her entire world to shift, and now everything was off-balance. Every step she took was in the wrong direction, every word said with a jarring inflection, every thought tainted by memories of him.

Three months after his death, Aria came to see her. Spencer was staring out the window, absently watching rain slide down the glass. Every now and then she would raise her hand and rest it against the window, closing her eyes slightly as if the feeling comforted her.

_"You know what I love about rainy days, Spence?"_

_"What's that, Tobes?"_

_"The fact that I get to spend them inside with you."_

Approaching her cautiously, Aria had asked if she wanted to go to the store with her. Spencer had barely even glanced at her as she let out a disbelieving scoff. Such mundane pursuits had long since lost all meaning for her. If the girls hadn't taken turns to make sure her pantry was well-stocked, and to coax and cajole her into eating at least a meal a day, she would have faded away.

They had lives, she knew. They had husbands and wives and children, and she was keeping them away. It was selfish, and yet she couldn't bear to let them go. She was never alone, because if she was they all knew what would happen. Yet self-destruction was seeming more and more tempting, as days bled together, as sunrises were washed out and the sky was murky and birds sang melancholy songs from the trees. Some nights she wouldn't go to bed at all, and then for days at a time she wouldn't leave it.

Five hundred and twelve days. She worked it out, not long after the accident. That's how long their _forever_ had been. They were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together, but they'd only got in five hundred days before he was snatched away from her. She had always known that hope bred eternal misery, but happiness was supposed to bring peace. But with the kind of happiness she'd had, the kind of love they'd shared, it was inevitable that his death would have killed her too.

After six months, Emily managed to persuade her to come outside. Wrapped in her thickest coat, Spencer followed her out into the open, with its blinding sunlight and harsh sounds and hurried atmosphere, as if nobody cared that she had lost her soul. Maybe nobody noticed. As they walked a few people gave her strange looks, but it didn't bother her. She knew what they were seeing: someone broken beyond repair, someone who had given up on everything they had once thought they wanted. Had once thought they were destined to have.

_"Spencer Hastings, you're the girl of my dreams and the love of my life. I don't want to spend a day without you. I want to spend my life with you, every moment of it. Will you marry me?"_

From that day she visited his grave every week, every Monday. She would bring a fresh bouquet of flowers, and she would sit by his grave, plucking weeds from the ground and running a hand along the top of the tombstone. _Beloved husband, friend, son. Gone but not forgotten_. It seemed strange to her that they had added the last part, as if forgetting him was even an option, even a remote possibility. As if by carving it in stone they had made their promise not to let him go.

She and Toby had made promises too, carved them with their words through the dark of the night, tattooed them on each other's hearts, carried them in pockets and in the palms of their hands. She remembered them all, and sometimes she would repeat them to herself when she couldn't sleep. _I promise to love you forever. I promise to never organize your CD collection unless you give me express permission. I promise to always save you the last slice of cherry pie. I promise to always be yours. I promise to love you until death do us part._

She had kept them all, of course. All except the very last one, because that was something she couldn't do. She had loved him until death parted them, and then she had kept right on loving him, her feelings not letting up, her heart not healing, her tears not lessening. The unspoken words in the vow bit at her heart, even now: I will love you until death parts us,_ and then I will stop_. She wouldn't stop. She couldn't.

Nine months after his death, she had still not washed her sheets, could not stand to lose even any small trace of him. His shampoo was still right above hers in the cabinet above the sink; his favorite coffee mug was sitting on the bench, exactly where he'd left it. Her books still lay side by side with his on the living room table, his favorite pair of jeans slung over the rocking chair he had made her the first year they were dating.

_"So, Mr Cavanaugh, what are you going to do now that you're a married man?"_

_"Well, Mrs Cavanaugh… I thought I might make love to my wife."_

As the anniversary of his death approached she became gripped with a panic so intense that it often left her reeling on the bathroom floor, the cool tiles pressing against her skin but not quite enough to jolt her back to her senses. Sometimes her friends would come in and find her like this, and they would help her to her feet and hug her and tell her it was going to be okay. Other times she would be alone, and she would stand up shakily and wrap her arms around herself and remember that she was not going to be okay.

She liked rainy days, because it felt like the sky was crying too. She didn't believe in god, but sometimes she pretended she did; it was some comfort to imagine that somewhere out there was a benevolent being who was watching over her. But then she would remember that anyone that benevolent would not have caused her this much pain, and suddenly it wasn't so comforting.

She felt a range of emotions in the months following his death. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Despair. Frustration.

But she never once felt a shred of peace.

_"I love you so much."_

_"I wanted to say that first."_

Instead she got to say it last. Every day. She would whisper the words into the night, mutter them in her sleep, sing them in her dreams. Wherever he was, she wanted him to know. She needed him to know that she hadn't given up on him, that she would never break her promises. She would be his and only his, for as long as she lived.

November came and went, and with it the last scraps of warmer weather. Sunshine was replaced by rain, white clouds by grey, warmth with cold. December brought with it the promise of snow, but the first day it finally delivered was, of all days, the anniversary. It seemed somehow fitting that it should snow on that day. Ignoring her friends' warnings, she set off across town.

His grave was covered with a light dusting of snow already, and she didn't brush it off. It was beautiful, touching, poetic in a way she couldn't quite describe. She sat by his grave for so long that she lost all feeling in her legs and arms, her nose turned pink, she started shivering. She didn't speak, because she didn't need to; she had never needed to. He knew without her saying it.

When the sun went down she made the long trek back to her house, arriving in darkness. Once she had started running a bath, with fragrant scents and a candle on either end of the tub, she sat down in his chair, the one he had made for her, and she cried. It had been a year, three hundred and sixty five days of constant torment, and she was still alone.

_"You're my safe place to land, and I never want to live without you."_

_"You'll never have to."_

_"You really think we'll get our happy ending?"_

_"I don't think. I know."_

Disturbed by a crinkling noise, Spencer stood up, nudging aside his jeans and pulling a crumpled piece of paper out from under them. It was folded several times, each line so worn that it was clear it had been read more than once. Sinking back onto the chair, Spencer opened the note.

_For T. My safe place to land. Always your girl, S._

She folded the note carefully, tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and then she went back to the bathroom. With each layer of clothing she shed she felt closer to who she was, who she was supposed to be, who she used to be. She was going back to the old Spencer, the one Toby had fallen in love with.

The bath was warm, the water reaching up to hold her. Not comforting, but familiar, and that's all she could ask for. She finally knew what she needed to do. She hadn't lied in her vows, she had simply misunderstood.

The candles were a melodramatic touch, she knew, but she wanted to make this moment perfect. She knew they would burn for hours, would probably still be burning when someone came in and found her body. The bathroom door was locked, so it would take a while to break down. By then the water would be red, the bath lukewarm, her body cold. Maybe the room would still smell like roses; maybe she'd have a smile on her face.

Death had parted them, and it was the only thing that could bring them back together again.

_"Please, don't let me go…"_

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_And you slipped away from me without talking._  
_The look in your eye was stronger than this._  
_And I drink alone to stop me from weeping._  
_What's left of my heart is forever yours,_  
_**forever yours**__… _

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End file.
